(upbeat music).
The central government thinks that young people’s incomes
should be raised to reverse Japan’s birth rate.
Stating our traditional measures to raise the birth rate
have focused on helping people raise children and get married.
This is the minister for child-related policies.
It’s a new position that was created in Japan
because of the serious issue of the declining birth rate.
I, maybe the minister, as a new minister, is an introduced Japan.
I don’t, I wanna do it.
I told you so.
I have been complaining essentially.
that their focus on the birth rate seems to be on helping people raise kids,
not actually getting people to a position
where they want to have kids in the first place.
Like it’s great to have all these policies
to help people raise children.
It is completely pointless to have a policy to help people raise children
if they don’t have children in the first place.
So at least the government seems to be shifting
and thinking they’re starting to get the right idea.
And that is very important because that is
the shift that is going to make the change.
Now, the first thing raising incomes, yes.
If you raise incomes of people, they are more likely to have children.
But they’re still missing the core element
that I have said on Ninja News Japan a million times.
So much so that I almost was getting ready to say,
like I’m not going to talk about it anymore.
They have to give, they have to have a shift
in work culture in Japan.
So the young people, or just people in general,
have time off to form human relationships.
The work culture in Japan is designed
to keep you in the workplace and exorbitant amount of time,
so much so that it’s actually pointless
to formate, to form any sort of actual
relationship with another human being.
So more money is a step one because then if I have money, I can do stuff.
But the next step is I need to be able to have time
to do stuff with all that extra money I’m making.
So I think the government is shifting in the right direction.
The new minister for child-related policies has the right initial idea.
They need to take a step further.
The problem is the step further is work culture.
in companies in Japan.
That have you work unnecessarily long hours to no benefit
because all the people I know who do
work actually these stupid hours in Japan.
They say they don’t do anything.
They’re productive for about six hours a day.
And then after that, they don’t do anything.
This matches up with the timing of a survey
of unmarried people who are under 30.
It turned out half of those people under 30
who are not married do not want children,
primarily because of economic concerns.
So they’re basically saying, I don’t have enough money to have kids,
so why would I even think about having kids?
400 respondents, that’s actually not a massive sample size.
18 to 29, that is the appropriate age range.
49.5% say they do not want kids.
53% of men say they don’t want kids and 45.6% of women
say they don’t want kids.
This is causing great anxiety about Japan’s future.
because is there going to be a Japan?
Elon Musk made the brilliant statement
that if things keep going the way they are,
there will not be a Japan anymore.
There’s Elon Musk.
He’s such a genius he can do basic math.
If numbers go down, eventually you run out of numbers or you hit zero.
(upbeat music)
Sushi-do, there’s been in the news, we’ve talked about it many, many times
because they are the victims of the food terrorism.
There is a food terrorism story coming up soon.
But they’ve done something else that’s very interesting.
So Sushi-do isn’t just Sushi.
It’s not just, it’s kaiten Sushi conveyor belt Sushi.
You can order lots of other stuff.
You can order French fries, you can order deep fried chicken
or lots of stuff from Sushi-do.
Sushi-do will use, it’s used cooking oil
in conjunction with another company
to create sustainable jet fuel, which is pretty awesome.
There are 680 restaurants in Japan.
And from 2025 they’re going to take all the oil they use.
Maybe they’re just putting the system into place now.
All the oil they use, that’s gonna be about 900,000
liters annually, and use that to create 750,000 liters of jet fuel.
I of course don’t understand the science
or anything behind it, as I’m an English major.
So I could talk about, when I read the news story,
I could talk about the tone of the article.
and sort of the read between the lines and that kind of stuff.
The science far, far beyond me.
But it is cool to take something that’s
been used and make it into something else.
That is a very positive net for the world.
But now we’ve talked about Sushi terrorism,
we have to actually get to some Sushi terrorism.
Yoshinoya is a beef bowl place.
So basically beef bowl, it’s gudon, it’s bowl of rice
and they put some shredded meat on top of it.
That’s the short version.
It’s really, really good.
It’s great late night food, it’s great food for drunk people.
There was a viral video, you think people would have learned
after a whole bunch of people just gotten in trouble
for this stuff, of a man eating directly
from the ginger container with chopsticks.
So basically they have the bowl that it’s yours
and then on the table in front of you, there’s gonna be condiments.
And one of them is ginger, you open up a little container,
you take ginger out, you put it on your food,
you mix it up, you eat it, you’re happy.
This guy thought, ah, you know it’d be really funny
with all the news of people doing gross stuff
and getting in trouble for it, I will do a gross thing.
So September 29th, 2022, he did this.
I do have the video up, second, let’s see.
So it’s the man, he’s got the bowl on his face,
he’s eating it, he’s got his chopsticks up, he’s eating it like they do.
I would actually say in the Chinese movies, when they’re really hungry,
they’re just shoveled and I chewed into their mouth.
He’s not actually eating that much,
he’s just shoveling a few into his mouth,
but those chopsticks have been in his mouth
and then those chopsticks are going back
into the shared condiment ginger bowl in front of him.
That’s gross, I don’t want that man spit on my ginger.
No one else does either and again, so after all this, was it worth it?
Well, the viral video got really popular so
the police noticed so they were arrested.
Now this is technically not illegal,
but it’s being filed under interfering with store business,
which I guess is an obstruction of business charge.
So he’s probably not gonna get arrested
because it’s not illegal, like he’s been arrested,
but he’s probably not going to get prison time
or anything like that, it’s gonna be a find him some sort.
But Japan is taking this really seriously.
They take all this communal stuff is being ruined
by these viral videos and this communal nature of eating
is a big part of Japanese culture, so I think they’re really offended by it.
And that’s of course why it’s so viral on the Internet,
which is what these cloud chasers want.
I don’t think they realize though, if it gets popular enough is guaranteed,
you’re gonna get noticed and therefore
guaranteed you’re going to get arrested.
(upbeat music)
Last week on C. McBee podcast, the other podcast I do.
I talked about the congressional trials and TikTok
and the congressional trials with Google four years ago
and how they were similar and different
and what the actual point was.
They’re talking about banning TikTok in America.
There’s really no, in a country that claims
to have like freedom of choice and freedoms like that
where you can buy guns, it seems unlikely
to be able to actually ban an app.
I did say quite clearly ban it on government devices,
100% behind that because it’s not your device, it’s the government device.
If you work for a company and the company gives you a phone
and they say don’t put TikTok on it,
I am 100% on board with that and keep it ticked on.
Tick-tock on it and you get fired.
I agree.
But personally, if you say I can’t use this app
because it’s going to track my information and stuff,
well every app tracks my information, I
don’t see how Tick-tock having my information
as opposed to Google or Facebook
or any other social media website.
How is that different?
So I don’t see the benefit or the choice of actually banning TikTok.
I’m not a massive TikTok user.
I have an account and you can go to Chuck McBeath
Chess on TikTok and watch basically
it’s clips of this and some gaming clips.
But it seems counter to the nature of the American ideal
to ban an app without more proof than they
actually showed the congressional here.
So I don’t think that’s actually going to go through.
Japan has decided to ban TikTok on tick-tock
on government devices when those government devices
have confidential information on them, which I think is perfectly fair.
I think that’s actually a bit loose.
Because it’s actually saying if my company,
or if I work for the government and the government gives me
a phone and I don’t handle confidential information,
I’m actually allowed to use TikTok on my government phone.
I actually think that’s stupid.
I think you should just clear cut ban it
on government phones and you’re done.
And I actually think companies should do the same thing.
But personally, if you want to use TikTok,
I think if you understand the risks,
go ahead and use TikTok.
Currently, it is not on any government devices.
So I’m assuming they did a little inventory and check
and they said, okay, none of our government
employees have put TikTok on their phones.
We’re just gonna say don’t do it now.
Everyone’s on board.
The government doesn’t allow the use of
external services on their phones at all.
Which again, I think is a good idea.
I shouldn’t as a government employee be putting anything
for my personal entertainment, Tinder, Facebook, Instagram,
Snapchat, whatever you want.
I shouldn’t be putting any of those things on my government issued phone.
On your personal phone, honestly, none of my business,
none of the government’s business, do what you want.
It has not become a Japanese version
of the congressional trial because Japan’s
pretty reasonable about this kind of stuff.
(phone ringing)
So an idol got in trouble.
And I do enjoy idol news because it’s such a weird world.
She went to a baseball game and they have an order system
with a QR code where you scan the QR code
and then you go, you just choose what you want to buy
and then you go pick up and you go.
So I think you can already guess what happened.
She tweeted out a copy of the QR code and said,
please buy me chili shrimp under my name.
I eat a lot, so please order it so I can like pick it up.
And then I want to eat some fried rice and kanage.
Kanage is like deep fried chicken balls, not testicles, balls of chicken.
So of course, fans, we’re paying attention
to her tweets constantly, bought her a ton of food
that a whole bunch of other fans complains.
Like, this is abuse of your fandom.
This is, the fandom of idols is taken very seriously
and there’s a lot of rules and stuff.
You can’t have a boyfriend and stuff.
We’ve talked about that in the past.
You can’t, you have to like, a lot of them,
you have to maintain a certain weight.
There was an idol group that actually was complaining
about that recently that they weren’t allowed to eat the stuff.
It was unhealthy ’cause they had to maintain a weight
of like 40 kilos, despite the fact that girls were all really tall.
So it didn’t really make sense.
The management company has already made her apologize
for the trouble she caused.
I found this interesting because I stream on Twitch.
I don’t have a massive fandom on Twitch.
I’m actually streaming to Twitch right now.
So I record this podcast.
But if a girl did the same thing on Twitch,
there would be no comment because it’s almost expected.
But as soon as you have a management company behind you,
there’s a certain amount of decorum and rules that need to be put in place.
So you have to be careful of that.
I found that interesting because if she had just been independent
and she had been streaming or live streaming
that kind of thing and that was her career choice,
she would have been fine.
But because she has a management company
behind her, she has to follow certain rules.
She does something bad.
It makes the management company look bad.
This is the kind of thing.
There was the girl who was a pro gamer
and she started crapping on short men.
She got fired because essentially her
pro gaming career was linked to a company.
And as soon as she got sheety with,
keep thinking I have an earthquake,
but it’s actually just big trucks going by.
(clock ticking)
In Japan, there are things called advertising trucks.
And they’re basically just rolling billboards.
They’re trucks and then instead of actually carrying cargo,
they put a big sign on the back.
where the car is, the trailer and they light it up.
So it’s basically, you can see it.
Some of them will play music and stuff.
There’s sound laws you have to be careful of.
In Tokyo, you see a lot of these, probably more there.
I’ve seen a few around where I live and where I work.
But in Tokyo, you see a bunch of them.
And the rule is that if you want to have a rolling billboard,
one of these advertising trucks in your in Tokyo,
it has to be approved by the city.
So I can’t have like my only fans with my like,
butthole on a billboard rolling through the downtown Tokyo.
That has to be approved and they’ll be like, “Oh, here’s butthole’s gross.
We don’t want that on a billboard.”
And only fans isn’t like the appropriate thing
to advertising all that kind of stuff.
So that makes sense.
There’s a loophole though.
And they actually deem, sorry, I have to say before that,
they actually deem advertising host and host as clubs.
Kind of the same thing.
Kids shouldn’t be like being encouraged to go to host clubs.
It’s not, can really the best way, it’s not, it’s CD.
How about that?
And so you shouldn’t really be advertising CD stuff
on the streets around Tokyo where everyone can see it
because that’s not really, that’s not really cool.
But there is a loophole and the loophole is,
if your truck is not registered in Tokyo,
it doesn’t have to like follow these rules.
So I get my truck in Chiba and I register
there and I make it an advertising truck
and then I start advertising a post club in Tokyo
because it’s a Chiba truck, it doesn’t have to be registered.
So the government, the local government in Tokyo is like,
well that’s not cool because they’re still
doing the thing we don’t want them to do.
They’re advertising the stuff we don’t want them to advertise.
So what we need to do is close that loophole.
So now they’re currently talking to neighboring districts
and saying, and you make the same rules we make so it’s like cohesive.
And if everyone has the same rules,
then even if you have an advertising truck in Chiba,
you’re not going to be able to roll it into Tokyo
and advertise stuff we don’t want people to advertise.
That’s interesting.
I didn’t actually think that there would,
these are local laws in rules that I didn’t know about.
I’ve seen the advertising ones, usually it’s for,
I don’t actually know what it’s for.
It’s usually got like little anime pictures on it
but I think it’s actually a hostess club
and they’re trying to like soften what they’re doing.
It’s really hard to tell because they roll by
and I don’t pay attention that I’m like, “Huh, what was that?”
That’s how effective that advertising actually is.
(upbeat music)
A great way to get the Internet to sort of dunk on your shit
is to tell the Internet to not dunk on your shit.
That is actually a guide.
So if I said like, “Hey, please don’t say anything negative
about an engine news Japan.”
I would expect the next day to be at least one negative
comment about an engine news Japan somewhere on the Internet.
And then if that got popular,
he could actually again go viral but in a negative way for me.
Maybe I should try that.
Maybe that’s the problem is I keep like not pushing people
to say anything positive or negative.
And but if I said like, “Oh, please,
only say positive things about an engine news Japan.”
And then people would all say negative things.
It would go viral and then more people would come to the show.
I think I just found my way to get famous.
Which is pretty awesome.
The producer of the Common Rider movies.
Common Rider is one of these, it’s like Sailor Moon.
It’s a character and he is a regular person
and he transforms into a hero usually with some complicated toy
that you can sell to children.
The movies are essentially extensions of
the kids show so they’re not great movies.
They produce them probably two or three a year.
They’re not great.
I mean, I’m not shitting on them.
They’re four kids, kids enjoy them.
That’s great.
If you’re gonna talk about quality cinema or filmmaking,
these would not fall into the art category of that.
That’s not to say it’s a bad thing.
As long as it makes kids happy, that’s all you’re really looking for.
The thing is people grow up and they still love Common Rider.
So they keep talking about Common Rider and they still go to the movies.
But somehow they haven’t really stuck in their head
that because I’ve grown up, these movies should grow up with me
whereas the movies are actually servicing
a group of let’s say eight year olds
and the group of eight year olds stays the same every year.
It’s just new eight year old.
The producer of these movies, his son had a really good idea.
He said, “What I’m gonna do is I’ll go on the Internet.
I’ll tweet.”
Yeah, please refrain from posting negative comments
on social media where an unspecified number of people can see them.
So what he’s saying is don’t tweet out negative stuff
about the new movie because then people who haven’t seen.
the movie might think it’s not a good movie and then I’ll go to the movie.
So of course the immediate storm that followed
was people saying, “You can’t tell me what to do.”
A lot of these people actually weren’t shitting on the movie.
They were just shitting on the comment.
They’re like, if you basically what you’re saying is
only say positive things about this film, that’s not really fair.
You can’t tell people to not do that.
If it’s not a good film, people should know it’s not a good film.
So maybe you should focus more on making quality films.
But this isn’t even like the director
or someone involved in the movie in any real way.
This is the producer of these films, his son.
So I’m assuming that his whole lifestyle is actually
built on the fact that these franchises are successful.
He wants people to only say good things
so that his dad can make more money so that he can have more money
sent to him or whatever that relationship is.
But if you want to make stuff and put it on the Internet,
an important piece of information to keep in mind is
not tell people to not do things on the Internet
because the Internet is inherently contrary.
They will naturally do the thing.
You tell them not to do.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(upbeat music).